Aum Shinrikyo was founded by Japanese national Shoko Asahara in 1987 and made global headlines in 1995 when its followers sprayed the lethal sarin nerve gas in Tokyo metro trains. The terrorist act claimed the lives of 13 people. In September 1999, the Japanese Public Security Investigation Agency said Asahara had admitted using sarin. A court found him guilty in 2004 of thirteen out of the seventeen charges and sentenced him to death.

Russia’s Investigative Committee opened a criminal case this April over setting up of the group. The investigators said unidentified persons had set up a union of followers of the Aum Shinrikyo group in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Between 2012 and 2014, the group raised money via the internet to carry out its illegal activity that involved “violence against citizens and injury to their health,” the investigators said.